


Cloud Atlas

by gaialux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21940888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/pseuds/gaialux
Summary: The Winchester gospels were always destined to happen.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11
Collections: SPN J2 Xmas Exchange





	Cloud Atlas

In the beginning, there were two brothers.

Before the youngest was even a year old their mother died and their father, in his grief, disappeared into the night.

Orphans, more or less. Like how any good story starts. 

Dean raises Sam with a smattering of foster parents, ‘uncles’, and wayward aunts. They survive though maybe not thrive. 

*

The dreams start shortly after Sam’s twelfth birthday. Fire and brimstone and the world being torn apart.

“Sammy,” cuts through as he grips the sheets and kicks his legs and cries out to be free. Arms wrap around him and the flames are snuffed out.

“It’s okay,” Dean says. His breath against Sam’s ear is cool. 

They stay like that most nights. Entwined. Reminding Dean of when Sammy was a baby and needed Dean in his crib to soothe the cries after Mom.  _ Protect Sam _ a voice always whispers. 

But from what?

*

More dreams. More memories. More voices.

Dean next. Whispers in the walls of the shitty motel they’ve got for the week. Dean’s eighteen. Legal adult. But apparently not legal enough to look after Sam so he took his brother and ran. They move on a weekly basis, change their names at least every two months, and keep moving moving moving. 

Sam still dreams. He wakes in the morning and runs to the bathroom. Cold, cold water thrown over his face as his stomach clenches and swirls and threatens to turn itself inside out.

Breathe. Breathe. Start again.

*

Sam finishes school with straight A’s and Dean tousles his hair, takes him out for ice-cream where they sit on a park bench and swirl the cold sweetness around. It feels like Sam’s a little kid again but he drinks it up. Pretends life is easy. Pretends everything is okay.

The sun is setting and it throws red across the rundown town they’re staying in.

“Sailors delight,” Sam muses as he takes the final licks of ice cream before starting work on the cone.

“What does black mean?” Dean asks. 

Sam shudders.

*

_ “You two were born to this, boys! It's your destiny. It was always you. As it is in Heaven, so it must be on Earth.” _

*

Time passes.

Towns. Motel rooms. Diners. Gas stations. Dreams. Dreams. Visions. Dreams. 

Sam scribbles it down in an old high school book, draws pictures that stick out in his mind. Men and angels and people strung up on racks. The sounds scream in his mind even as he forces them out. 

“What’s this?” Dean asks one day as Sam comes out of the bathroom after a shower. Dean’s flicking through the exercise book. He pauses on a page, stares at it, stares at Sam. 

Water drips off Sam’s hair and pools in the dips of his collarbone. Frigid air fills the room and they freeze like icicles there. 

“Dreams,” Sam says finally. His voice is thick. Trapped.

Dean continues to flick through the pages. Back and forth. Frantic. His gaze snaps to Sam.

“I’ve seen these,” he says. He steps over to Sam, grabs his bare shoulders, digs into those curves and breaks the icicles still clinging. “Exactly these. How?”

“I only know,” Sam whispers. Then, louder. “I don’t know! They just appear, in my head. I feel like I’m going fucking crazy.”

Dean drops his hold and steps away like Sam is toxic. A disease he wants to avoid.

The motel room door slams shut and Sam winces.

*

Light fills the room and Sam blinks against it. Did he fall asleep? He’s contorted in the armchair, legs curled up under him and neck aching.

“Dean?”

“Hello, Sam.”

It’s not Dean. Even Sam’s sleep addled brain can tell that much. The door is still closed. The light, growing brighter by the second, isn’t coming from there or the TV. It’s coming from the man standing over by the two beds. A halogen of white light encasing him. It follows as he steps forward.

“Hello, Sam,” he repeats. “I’m Lucifer.”

Sam bolts upright. He has to be dreaming. This  _ feels _ like all his dreams — at least the ones that flit in and out, the ones that tell him about destiny. 

The man standing there nods. “I know,” he says. “It’s a lot to take in, but you know me. Think deeply, Sam. You’ve always known me.”

Flashes. The drawings from his book. Bright, bright light filling the rooms he walks into. Wings. Thousands of layers together and they couldn’t be bird or butterfly or human. 

“Is this another dream?” Sam says. He glances over at the bed and only then does he see Dean’s figure. A lump under layers of blankets against the August cold. 

The man —  _ Lucifer _ — shrugs. “In a way, yes. It was the best place to speak.” He steps forward. Close enough Sam could touch if he reached out. “You’re my vessel, Sam. And you need to let me in.”

This is a conversation he’s had in his dream time and time again, but it was always cut short. He could always pull himself out. And he could never, ever see the face of the one speaking. 

“No,” Sam says. His voice is hardly above a whisper. 

“You will let me in,” Lucifer says. “It always had to be you.”

*

Light fills the room and Sam blinks against it—

_ NO _

—he bolts upright but this time the room is dark. Silent. Almost. He looks over at one of the beds, at the figure snoring softly.

This time it is Dean. Only Dean. 

Sam can’t stop himself from rushing to the bed and dropping on his knees beside the head. Dean wakes with a start, his hand reaching under his pillow. Sam knows there’s a knife or a gun always there.

He grabs Dean’s wrist. “Whoa. It’s okay. It’s just me.”

Dean brings his hand back. “Fuck, Sam. What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

It all comes spilling from his mouth. The dreams. The visions. Whatever the hell just happened mere moments before. 

Dean listens silently until Sam is done. Tears spill down his cheeks and he angrily wipes them away.  _ Get a grip _ . Dreams happen. 

“I—“ Dean says. Clears his voice and tries again. “I’ve seen them too. But...but mine was  _ Michael _ . Telling me he is an archangel of the Lord.”

Sam’s read the Bible. Or at least parts of it. He knows the story of the archangels: Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Gabriel. One fallen from Heaven. One God’s right hand man.

“What does it mean?” Sam’s voice isn’t more than a hoarse whisper.

Dean reaches out and grasps Sam’s hands. His fingertips are sleep warming, reassuring in the cold air that’s somehow surrounded Sam. He can still feel Lucifer. Can still hear far-away whispers hissing in his ear.

“I don’t know,” Dean says. “But we’ll find out, okay? We’ll fix this.”

*

We all know how the rest of the story goes.

  
  



End file.
